Help

For link workers and other professionals

For social prescribing link workers, health coaches, care coordinators, council and voluntary sector staff: anyone who helps people find local support.

1. Get professional access

Sign in with any email address. We email you a link; there are no passwords.
Go to professional access and give your work email address.
If your organisation’s email is one we already trust (for example an NHS or council address), we send a link to it; open it while signed in and you are set up. Otherwise a curator checks and approves you.

Once a year we send a link to your work address to check you still work there. Professional access lets you see listings meant for professionals, use the team library, and check listings. You belong to a team (your practice, network or organisation): checks from one team count as one source.

2. Searching well

Search in plain words and add a town or postcode: “carers support Bridport”, “walking dt6”.
Results come in three groups: local, the wider area, and national, phone and online. People at home can use the last group, and “For people at home” on What’s on.
Check the line saying when a listing was last checked, and any warning that it may be out of date.

3. Resource sheets

Go to Make a resource sheet, choose a topic (or type one) and a place.
You get a sheet in sections: local, the wider area, national and phone, and information and resources. Remove entries, move them up or down, or search and add more.
Print it, or choose large print or plain text (to paste into an email or text message). Printed sheets have a QR code to each entry and to the live sheet, and the date they were checked.

You can also start a sheet from My picks, with “Make a resource sheet from these”.

4. Take-away plans: what’s on, and when

Add events to a sheet: search for them on the sheet, or choose “Add their events” on a group.
Choose the dates: one day, a week, two or four weeks from a start date. The sheet lists the actual dates, with any cancelled or full dates shown.
Print it as a list by day or as a Monday to Sunday week planner, with blank lines for notes. The person can add the dates to their phone’s calendar.

5. Saving, sharing and the team library

Save a sheet to My saved. Choose who can see it: only you, anyone with its link, or your team library.
Follow a sheet to get an email when an entry is updated, closes, may be out of date or is no longer listed.
On a saved sheet, “Remove the entries no longer listed” tidies it in one go, and “Find something similar” suggests replacements. “Mark as seen” clears the change tags without changing the sheet.

6. Checking and reporting listings

On any listing or event, choose “Link workers: check or report this listing”.

I’ve checked it: say how you know. Only speaking to them or visiting marks the listing as checked; it then shows “Confirmed by a link worker” with the date, and your team, never your name.
Report a problem: stopped, day or time changed, contact details wrong, moved, or something else. A stopped or changed time shows a warning on the listing straight away, until a curator checks.
Yes or no on suggested changes: your answer counts as evidence. Changes that two independent sources agree on can be published without waiting for a curator.

7. Contact details for professionals

Some groups show a phone number or email only to professionals. On those listings, choose “Professionals: more contact details”. Please do not pass these on to the public; give people the listing instead, or use “Send them a message”.

8. Gaps in local support

Gaps in local support shows, for each town, which needs have nothing or only one thing listed nearby. A gap means nothing is listed, not that nothing exists: tell us what you know.

9. Keeping people’s information safe

Never put anything about the person you are helping on a sheet, a report or a note: no names, health details or circumstances. Sheets have blank lines for that, on paper.
Hand sheets over on paper, or by link, QR code, text or email.
Questions: [email protected].